


my blood runs the same as it did before (only difference is i barely feel it anymore)

by moonmagicked



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, PTSD, Self-Harm, Trauma, Will Also Has Problems, Will has Powers, Working title was "Will's Our Cleric" if that tells you anything
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-22
Packaged: 2019-03-01 12:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13295124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonmagicked/pseuds/moonmagicked
Summary: "Will moved to the sink before his mom could investigate further, turning on the water and putting his stinging thumb under it. He inhaled a deep breath and held it as he braced for the burn of the water hitting the torn skin.But the pain never came. A sudden chill came over him and he suppressed an uneasy shiver, but there was no pain. The water washed over his skin, clearing away the bloodied skin and leaving--Nothing. Leaving nothing underneath."ORThe angsty "Will Has Powers from the Upside Down" fic that we all need in our lives





	1. Chapter 1

 

Will's scream caught in his throat as he jerked awake from a nightmare. His jaw hung open at a painful angle, but no sound escaped except a strangled sort of wheeze, and he turned and smothered his face with his pillow to muffle even that. He lay in his bed trembling, willing his breaths to even out and his racing heart to settle, telling himself over and over _it was just a dream it was just a dream it was just a dream it wasn’t real it was just a dream._

But that was part of the problem. Will didn’t know if it _was_ just a dream. He didn’t know the difference anymore. All of last year after he had gone missing he had been told that everything was in his head, that his dreams were dreams and his flashbacks were flashbacks and that none of it was real and none of it could hurt him.

And they had been _wrong_.

Now he was still having dreams and still having flashbacks and he didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.

He clenched his eyes shut and images of his dream-not-dream danced behind his eyelids, the tornado-like smoke of _Him_ swirling all around him as a spidery limb reached towards him and Will screamed and screamed and screamed and tried to run but he couldn’t all he could do was scream--

Will pushed his face harder into the pillow to muffle the sob he could no longer hold back.

He didn’t known how long he lay there, shaking and sweating and sobbing into his pillow. Eventually he was too exhausted to cry anymore, all the adrenaline drained from him and leaving nothing but a bone-deep weariness behind.

Will rolled onto his back, wiping the tears from his eyes as he stared at his ceiling.

He wouldn’t be getting back to sleep tonight. He knew he would look even worse than he had the previous day when he went to school in the morning, but he also knew no one would really question it. A part of him wished they would, but mostly he was grateful that they didn’t push, that he didn’t have to explain.

Will couldn’t remember the last time he had gotten a full night of sleep. It might have been when he was possessed, if he was honest with himself, though he didn’t know if chemical-induced unconsciousness counted as true sleep. Still, it had been the last time he had truly been out for more than a few hours at a time.

Immediately after everything, no one had slept well. He knew all of his friends woke from nightmares those first few nights. He heard his brother wake up shouting (and it made Will feel sick with guilt when those shouts were his name), and his mother came into his room after every nightmare she had to check that he was still there, that he was still breathing, still himself.

It had been three months now, though, long enough that most of them were able to sleep through the nights undisturbed more often than not.

But not Will.

 _Because they’re not really nightmares_ a traitorous voice that didn’t sound like Will’s own, that sounded more like _Him_ , whispered to him.

Will could not sleep without waking up drenched in sweat and shaking. Will was not okay.

It was a sort of unspoken understanding among everyone at the same time as it was something they all looked past. Will was not alright, and no one honestly expected that he would be. But he had mastered the art of denial from a young age. He had learned very early and very quickly how to lie and say “I’m fine” in a convincing enough way that no one would question the bruises in the shape of fingers on a six-year-old’s wrists, or the bags under a seven-year-old’s eyes from another night spent awake listening to shouts and screams and slamming doors, or the empty space in eight-year-old Will’s household in the shape of an absent father who never loved him anyway.

Or the painful coughing fits behind locked bathroom doors and the sound of running water to cover the sounds of otherworldly slugs being thrown up into the drain.

Will had said he was fine for so long that everyone, his friends and their parents and his brother and his teachers and everyone save for maybe his mother, everyone began to believe it and accept it. Even when his friends knew he shouldn’t be fine, they accepted it. Because the reality of it was that none of them were fine, and none of them knew how to deal with anything that had happened to them. They were barely-teenagers dealing with more trauma before they hit puberty than most people dealt with in a lifetime, and it was all too easy for them to accept Will’s excuses and turn a blind eye to everything.

And when the dark circles under Will’s eyes became the norm rather than the exception, when he spaced out so often it stopped drawing attention, when his uneaten lunches became a daily occurrence and not an unusual one, well then it all seemed all the more normal to them and less worthy of concern.

And really, Will let them believe he was okay, he wouldn’t let them believe anything else other than that he was absolutely, 100% okay. So it was his own fault, he told himself. Everything that happened was his own fault.

Will wasn’t okay, and everyone sort of knew it but allowed themselves not to, and it was Will’s fault, okay, it was all his own fault and he deserved what happened to him, he did.

(He had learned to lie too well at too young an age, even--especially--to himself)

 

\--

 

The sun had barely risen when there was a soft knock on his door. It opened a moment later and his mother’s tired face hovered in the doorway, looking almost as sleep deprived as Will felt.

“‘Morning, sweetie,” she said. Her eyes ran over him, likely taking in his exhausted appearance. “Another rough night?”

Will shrugged. “The usual.”

Joyce frowned, but didn’t push. She understood more than anyone else did, Will thought, as he knew she hardly slept any more than he did some nights, so it wasn’t like she could really question him.

“Well why don’t you come help me make a nice breakfast then. Let’s start the day off good.”

Will wasn’t really hungry, and he wasn’t really eager to get out of bed and start his day any earlier than he absolutely had to, but he nodded anyway. It would make his mom happy, and he would do anything to make her happy. It was the least he could do after ruining her life the way he had ( _Bob_ his thoughts whispered,  _you killed Bob_ ).

So he found himself in the kitchen helping her a few minutes later, still half asleep with a knife in hand as he cut up the onions and tomatoes before him, _chop chop chop_ , when his hand slipped and the knife went _chop_ straight into his thumb.

He inhaled sharply, entire body going stiff. There was a moment where he felt nothing before a sharp, hot pain through his thumb as his nerves caught up with body. Blood started to well up, dripping down his finger and onto the cutting board before he shoved his injured finger against the dark fabric of his sweater.

“Will?” his mom said, voice high and worried. “Are you okay, honey?”

“Yeah,” he forced himself to say, and he was almost impressed with how steady his voice sounded. “Yeah, I’m fine. I just hit my hand.”

A part of Will felt guilty lying to his mom, especially over something so small. But that was just it. It was just something small, and his mom worried so much over everything, and he had already caused her so much worry. He didn’t need to worry her more over a cut thumb.

Will moved to the sink before his mom could investigate further, turning on the water and placing his stinging thumb under it. He inhaled a deep breath and held it as he braced for the burn of the water hitting the torn skin.

But the pain never came. A sudden chill came over him and he suppressed an uneasy shiver, but there was no pain. The water washed over his skin, clearing away the bloodied skin and leaving--

Nothing. Leaving nothing underneath.

With wide eyes, Will brought his hand up to close to his face. Up close he could see the faintest mark where he had cut himself, but nothing more. Just the pale white line of an old scar.

There was a tickle under his nose, and Will knew with sickening certainty without having to look that it was blood.

“Are you sure you’re okay, honey?” his mom asked, coming up behind him and startling him. He hurriedly wiped at his nose with his sleeve before turning around.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, see?”

Will held up his hand, whole and unblemished, putting all of his effort into keeping it from trembling.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, and he swallowed down the guilt of the lie.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW that the "self-harm" tag is for this chapter, though it isn't with any sort of suicidal intent. This should be the only time it comes up as well. Just a heads up!

Will could almost,  _ almost _ convince himself he had imagined the incident with his thumb that morning. He had been exhausted and barely awake, and he was already regularly questioning reality enough as it was. It wasn’t much of a stretch for him to believe that he had imagined himself cutting his finger. Sure, there had been blood, but maybe it had just been a tiny little slice (papercuts bled like crazy and they were barely cuts at all, right?) and he just couldn’t see it.

He couldn’t stop looking at his finger, and no matter how many times he looked he couldn’t find an open cut at all, not even a sliver, but. Still. Still. There had to be an explanation.

Will knew there was really only one way to find out.

It was all he could think about all day. It was almost a welcome relief to have something different to worry about for once, for a different fear to be occupying all of his waking thoughts. He went through the school day in a daze, only half aware of what was going on.

Will had decided on the drive to school that morning that he couldn’t tell his friends what had happened. He couldn’t have yet another thing being wrong with him, another thing that made him different, another reason he was a freak. He couldn’t give them something else to worry about, not when he didn’t even know what was happening himself. He couldn’t bring yet another supernatural problem into their lives. He couldn’t.

His friends had questioned him, quiet, “You okay?”s combined with worried frowns, but he brushed away their concerns with smiles and nods and practiced “I’m fine, just tired”s, and he was a freak anyway, he was always acting weird, so he knew they’d accept it.

And they did.

He made it through the day without remembering most of it. He was vaguely uneasy about the way it felt like he had just blinked and suddenly he was outside waiting for Jonathan to pick him up, the memories of how he got from point A to point Z a fuzzy haze he didn’t want to dwell on. Will didn’t like to question the way he lost time sometimes, the way he felt like he was floating and not really existing.

(He had brought it up to Mike once, a few days after the Mind Flayer had been burned from him. Mike had still been a near constant presence at his side that week, and Will had still been exhausted and drained and emotional enough to let his guard down and admit that he wasn’t completely okay.

“I don’t feel like I’m completely alive,” Will had said. It was whispered in the safety of the dead of night, Mike sleeping over though neither of them were doing much sleeping. “I feel like part of me died back there in the Upside Down. Like I’m missing something. Like He took it.”

Mike hadn’t known what to say. Will hadn’t expected him to, because what could you say to something like that? Neither of them ever brought it up again, and Will hoped that Mike had forgotten he had ever said it at all.)

Jonathan gave him a funny look when he climbed into the car, the same funny look he thought he remembered his friends had been giving him all day.

“How was your day?” Jonathan asked him as he drove away. His voice was just casual enough to be not casual at all.

“Fine,” Will said. He kept his gaze fixated on his hand, still staring at the unblemished skin of his thumb.

“Anything interesting happen?”

“Not really.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes then, not wholly uncomfortable save for the glances Jonathan kept throwing Will’s way out of the corner of his eyes. Will barely noticed, too lost in his thoughts.

“You know you can talk to me, right?” Jonathan said suddenly. He almost blurted it out, like he just couldn’t hold the words back any longer.

“I know,” Will said seriously, turning to look Jonathan directly in the eye. It wasn’t even a lie. He knew he could talk to his brother, knew he would always listen and try his hardest to understand and help Will. He knew that he  _ could _ talk to Jonathan. But he also knew Jonathan didn’t deserve to be burdened with any more of Will’s problems, so even if he could talk to him, Will wouldn’t.

“I mean it,” Jonathan said. “You can talk to me about anything.”

“I  _ know _ .”

Jonathan nodded, though he didn’t look entirely convinced.

“And you’d tell me if anything was wrong, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Will said. “But I’m okay. I promise.”

Jonathan nodded again, more to himself than to Will.

“I still have nightmares too, you know,” Jonathan said. Will’s head jerked back toward him at the sudden confession. His immediate urge was to deny his own nightmares, but he bit back the lie. There were only so many lies he could spin before the web came unraveled, and looking at Jonathan’s nervous face now, he knew this lie would be a pointless one.

“I know Nancy has them too,” Jonathan said. “And mom. I think everyone probably does. I know we don’t really talk about them, ‘cause it’s hard, but. It’s normal, y’know? After everything. I think it’d be weirder if we all didn’t have nightmares.”

Will had to look away, dropping his gaze down to his hands and keeping silent. He didn’t know what to say to Jonathan. He felt vaguely like he wanted to cry, though he couldn’t explain where the urge came from.

“I had a nightmare last night,” Jonathan continued, “I don’t remember it well now, but it was. It was about that night. At the cabin.”

A cold hand suddenly gripped Will’s heart. The urge to cry was gone, replaced with something sick and uneasy in the pit of his stomach. Jonathan had a nightmare about him. Because of him. It was his fault.

“I have nightmares about that night a lot. And about when you were gone. I’ll do anything to keep you safe again, Will. I’ll do anything for you.”

Will just kept staring at his hands, willing his brother to stop, stop talking, please stop. But Jonathan, oblivious to the effect his words were having on his brother, didn’t stop.

“I just mean that I get it. The nightmares and stuff. So if you can’t sleep and you want to talk, I’m here for you.”

“Okay,” Will said. His voice sounded weird to him, like it was far away or belonged to someone else. Like it wasn’t his own. He curled his hand into the tightest fist he could manage, trying to dig his nails into his palm until it hurt, just so he could be sure that his hand was his, that his body was his, that he was still there in a body that was his.

“I love you,” Jonathan said, reaching over and ruffling Will’s hair. Will forced his lips to pull up into a smile that hurt his cheeks.

“Don’t make it weird,” Will said, trying to make his voice as light as possible. “But thanks.”

_ It’s all your fault, all your fault, all your fault _ his thoughts whispered, and he forced himself to smile a little wider, clenched his fist a little harder.

When they pulled up at their house Will let himself linger around Jonathan for a few minutes, let himself sell his facade of normality as much as he could, before he broke off to go to his room with the excuse of having homework to do.

He sat on his bed doing nothing but staring at his hand, maybe for minutes, maybe for an hour, before he made up his mind.

Quickly, making sure Jonathan didn’t notice, Will crept into the kitchen. The knife he had used this morning at breakfast was still drying in the sink. It seemed fitting to use the same one, so Will snatched it and hid it under his sweater before heading to the bathroom and locking the door behind him.

Holding his hand over the sink, Will brought the knife down to hover over the same thumb he had cut that morning. His hand trembled a bit and he gripped the knife tighter to steady it.

Will could feel his heart pounding against his chest, a painful  _ thump, thump, thump _ that seemed to echo in the quiet of the bathroom. He stared at his thumb, scared to bring the knife down, scared of what this might prove or disprove.

Then he brought the knife down against his skin.

It was a shallow cut, Will’s trembling and nervous hand barely breaking the skin. But it was a cut all the same and it took only a moment before blood started to well up.

Then came the moment of truth. Will held his breath as he turned the sink on and placed his finger beneath the stream of water. He waited for the sting that never came.

The blood washed away and there was nothing beneath it.

A cold ache had set in his bones, something unnervingly familiar.  _ He likes it cold, He likes it cold. _

Will dragged his eyes up to his reflection in the mirror, expecting but still feeling sick at the thin strip of blood that had started to drip down his nose.

Before Will knew what he was doing he had pushed his sleeve up to his elbow and brought the knife down against his wrist, harder this time. In the back of his mind Will knew that it should hurt, (even if his threshold for pain had changed after everything, now nothing could compare to the sensation of literally being burned alive), but he couldn’t feel it in that moment. He couldn’t feel anything but  _ cold, cold, He likes it cold _ .

Blood again welled up from the cut, more blood this time, spilling down his arm into the sink. Will waited a few seconds this time before placing his arm under the running water. Pink water filled the sink. Nothing but a scar remained under the blood on his arm.

He brought the knife down on his wrist again, even harder, and this time he felt the pain. He let out a gasp, suddenly coming back to himself, and he dropped the knife into the sink to grab at his injured arm. Blood, a lot of blood, poured out of the cut, and it  _ hurt _ . 

Then the pain eased and the blood stopped flowing.

Will washed the blood off his arm, revealing the new scar beneath. It was a thicker scar than the others, slightly pink and raised. It suddenly hit him what he had just done. What had just happened. 

Will ripped his sleeve back down to cover the fresh scars, unable to stomach looking at the horrid sight.

Then he promptly leaned over the toilet and threw up.

When at last the sickening twisting of his stomach eased and there was nothing left but sour bile inside him, Will dragged himself back up and leaned against the sink counter. 

The face staring back at Will in the mirror did not look like his own. Half-dried blood painted dark strips beneath both nostrils. Will could taste copper from where it had pooled on his upper lip. His skin was so pale it seemed almost grey save for the sickly red flush of his cheeks. His eyes were watery and bloodshot and ringed with circles so dark they looked sunken into his face. It looked like a nightmare version of himself, like the him that had been lost in the Upside Down had come and replaced the real Will.

With trembling hands, Will cleaned the blood from his face and from the sink. He was shivering uncontrollably now, teeth chattering despite his thick sweater.

He didn’t stop to put the knife back before he retreated to his room. He shoved in under some sweaters in his drawer before pulling another, thicker sweater on over his current one and then climbing into his bed. He barely managed to pull the covers over his head before the tears came and he pushed his face against his pillow to muffle the sounds of his sobs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Attempts to write a fic about my soft son having healing powers
> 
> Also me: Ends up making it angsty as all Hell
> 
> The other kids start appearing in the next chapters! And some happier/sweeter moments along with them. You just gotta ride the angst train with me first, sorry not sorry.
> 
> Thank you for reading! xo


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for homophobic slurs and bullying

Will had spent the next morning in a fog.

An undercurrent of dread, cold and harsh, had settled in his bones. Will felt as if any progress he had made the past few months was gone, and he was right back where he was back in November.

The sudden weight of an arm slung around Will’s shoulder startled him out of his daze. He had been drifting through the hallway only half-awake, feeling vaguely like he was sleepwalking.

“Will!” It was Dustin’s voice, and sure enough when Will looked up he saw that it was Dustin’s arm around his shoulder. “Earth to Will!”

“I’m here,” Will said, quirking his lips up and forcing out a soft chuckle. It all felt a little funny, a little sluggish, like his body was taking a few seconds to catch up with his mind.

Dustin was grinning at him, but the grin slowly started to slip the longer he looked at Will.

“Dude, no offense, but you look like absolute shit. Like, worse than usual,” he said, with all of his usual tact.

“Wow, thanks Dustin, that makes me feel great,” Will said. He had been aiming for lighthearted, but it just sounded tired even to his own ears.

“No, seriously.” Dustin pulled him to the side and held him still, placing a hand on each of Will’s shoulders and facing him directly. “You look like _shit_ , dude.”

Will shifted uncomfortably, looking down at his feet to avoid meeting Dustin’s eyes. He took in a deep breath to ground himself.

“I just didn’t sleep well,” Will said quietly. When Dustin didn’t say anything for moment Will risked looking up at him. Dustin’s eyebrows were drawn together and his lips were pulled into a frown and he was looking at Will with so much concern and sympathy and _pity_ that it made Will sick, filled his gut with a sickening mixture of anger and guilt and the overwhelming urge to run at the expression. The scars on his arm seemed to itch suddenly and Will had to look away.

“Are you doing okay?” Dustin asked if a voice that was uncharacteristically soft. Dustin was loud, he was crass, he was vulgar, he was joyful. He was the heart and the laughter of their group. He was not soft and sad and gentle, and Will didn’t want him to be.

Will opened his mouth, a lie ready on the tip of his tongue, but he never got the chance to let it loose before a different pair of hands was shoving at him and pushing him from Dustin’s grasp.

Will stumbled, only barely stopping himself from tumbling to the ground. He hadn’t even been shoved that hard, but his feet didn’t seem fully connected to his brain and it still took all of his effort to keep himself standing.

“Whatcha faggots doing?”

Will didn’t need to look up to know it was Troy. It was always Troy.

“Fuck off, Troy,” Dustin said, sounding more exasperated than anything else. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”

“Than break up a couple of queers making out in the halls? Definitely not. If you’re stupid enough to do that in public then you’re asking for it.”

“Gross, dude! We were not making out.” Dustin sounded angrier now.

Will felt even sicker. _Gross_ his thoughts echoed. _You’re gross._

“Sure looked like it,” Troy said. He took a step closer to Dustin, puffing up his chest and peering down at him. Dustin had gotten taller recently, but Troy was taller still, and he looked threatening as he loomed over Dustin with a glare.

Then Troy turned to Will, and if he looked down on Dustin he practically towered over Will. Will took a step back, but it only brought him up against the wall, and with two sweeping steps Troy had him cornered, pressing him against the wall with a hand on each shoulder in a warped imitation of the hold Dustin had had on him just moments before. But where Dustin had been looking at him with care and concern, Troy’s gaze held only anger and the promise of violence.

“Better watch yourself,” Troy said in a low voice. Will shoved half-heartedly at Troy’s chest, hoping this would be one of the times he backed off easily, but Troy only slapped his hands away before resuming his grip on Will’s shoulders, his fingers digging into Will’s skin.

“Keep your hands to yourself,” he snapped. “Don’t spread your zombie faggot germs to me, you goddamn freak.”

And Will knew he should keep his mouth shut, he knew better than to say anything, because he had been bullied long enough to know how this worked and that it would be quicker and hurt less if he just kept his head down and took it. But he was just so tired, and there was that new but increasingly common thrum of anger buzzing under his skin that he didn’t know how to handle, and maybe it had something to do with the way Troy’s face leering down on him as he spat out the word _freak_ reminded him too much of his father, or maybe it was the way the wires between his mouth and his brain seemed all tangled up, or maybe it was all of it or something else entirely that caused him to look Troy straight in the eye and spit back,

“You’re the one who touched me, so maybe you should just let go if you don’t want to catch my _freak germs_.”

Troy’s eyes widened, looking as shocked at Will’s retort as Will himself felt. For a moment Will thought that might be enough, that the surprise would cause Troy to let him go.

The universe had never been that kind to Will.

Will hardly had time to register that one of Troy’s hands had left his shoulder before there was a heavy, blinding pain on his left cheek. Will let out a cry and crumpled forward. Troy let him go then and Will slid to the floor, holding his throbbing face in his hands.

“You ever speak to me like that again and you’re fucking dead,” Troy hissed. “I’ll put you right back into the grave and make sure you stay there this time.”

He kicked at Will’s foot with a _thud_ for emphasis before finally turning and walking away. Dustin was at Will’s side in a second, kneeling next to him.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Dustin said. “Oh, shit, are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Will said, though his voice trembled far too much for it to be convincing. The pain in his cheek had already started to ebb, replaced with a cold ache that only made him feel all the worse. He almost wanted to laugh at the utter rottenness of his luck, at how he could not catch a goddamn break. The world just seemed to want to laugh at him and spit on him while he was down. _Freak_ , he thought in a voice that was a mixture of both Troy’s and his father’s, _you goddamn freak_.

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Will said again, focusing on steading his voice and shoving away his thoughts. The words sounded stronger this time, but his body was trembling and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t stop it.

“Come on, look at me, dude, you’re making me nervous here.”

Will didn’t want to look at Dustin, didn’t want to look at whatever expression of pity of worry or disgust might be there, but he forced himself to lift his hand from his hands.

“Oh fuck, you’re bleeding,” Dustin blurted out. Will lifted a shaking hand up to his nose, and sure enough, it came away bloody. He hastily wiped at his nose with his sleeve.

“It’s fine,” Will said, though his voice betrayed him by cracking. “He didn’t get me that hard. I can barely feel it anymore.”

“You’re shaking like crazy, Will.”

Damn his traitorous body. Will gripped the title below him hard and willed his shivering body to still.

“Just a little shaken up. I’m okay, Dustin, really.”

Dustin didn’t look convinced. His eyes raked over Will’s face and Will wanted to squirm, feeling unnervingly like he was back in the lab and being studied all over again. But Will knew there was no bruise there for Dustin to find ( _because you’re a freak and there’s something wrong with you and He did something to you_ ) so he held his breath until the visual interrogation was over.

“Guess you got lucky,” Dustin finally said. “What were you _thinking_ talking back to Troy?”

“I wasn’t,” Will admitted nervously. “Thinking, that is. It was stupid.”

“Yeah, it was pretty stupid,” Dustin agreed. “But it was also pretty badass.”

Dustin looked so impressed that the smile Will responded with was almost genuine.

“Thanks,” he said sheepishly and Dustin grinned at him.

“Come on, let’s go before anyone else decided to harass us,” Dustin said. He extended his hand to Will and helped pull him up to his feet. Will swayed for a moment, gripping Dustin’s hand tighter to keep himself from sliding back to the ground. Worry found its way back over Dustin’s features again, but then he shook his head and turned away.

“The others are probably wondering where the hell we are. Better hurry before Mike sends out a search squad after you.”

It was meant to be a joke, but the words squeezed at Will’s throat and he could only nod and silently follow Dustin, his thoughts a whispered mantra of _your fault, your fault they worry, your fault they all got hurt, all your fault, all your fault._

If Dustin questioned his silence he didn’t let it show, and Will was grateful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: I wrote this entire chapter with Henry Bowers instead of Troy by mistake and did not notice until my second read through. Mixing up my 80's horror bullies whoops
> 
> This is just a filler chapter really but I wanted some Dustin and Will interaction because I never read much about them together. I almost cut this chapter out bc it's not very relevant to the plot but... here we are. I've always been more for writing character focused fics than plotty fics anyway.
> 
> Things start picking up more next. Next chapter features my fav dynamic trio: Will and El and Mike!
> 
> Let me know what you think! xx

**Author's Note:**

> The working title to this was "Will's Our Cleric", because Will is _absolutely_ their cleric, and if he had powers, they would totally be healing powers. But because I'm me, this fic turned out much darker than I had originally planned. It does have a happy ending, however! 
> 
> The next chapter is already written and most of it is drafted so it should be updated fairly soon. Coming up is plenty of bonding time between the kids.
> 
> Also disclaimer that this fic is from Will's pov and he is not always the most reliable narrator when it comes to what everyone else is actually thinking and feeling and noticing (wink wink)!
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoyed! I live for validation.


End file.
